


Reassemble

by sunryder



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Compliant, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Spoilers, Because everything I write is CC, Captain America: The Winter Soldier Compliant, Pre-Clint Barton/Phil Coulson
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-16
Updated: 2014-05-16
Packaged: 2018-01-24 23:55:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1621610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunryder/pseuds/sunryder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How Philip J. Coulson got the Avengers back together. </p><p>(Both on purpose, and totally by accident.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reassemble

**Author's Note:**

> Sometimes when I'm trying to get through writer's block I do something like this. This story is five drabbles, all of different/increasing length, and all from a different POV. I've put them all in chronological order rather than by length for ease of reading. 
> 
> Also, because fate is kind, they fill the Future!Fic square on my trope bingo card.

Coulson cradled Fury’s little black toolbox between his fingertips like it was an egg about to explode.

 

She knew Coulson had kept the cube with him every moment since Fury had handed it over, stopping every so often to slip his hand into his pocket and trace along its blunted edges like a soft touch was all he needed to get it to spill all its secrets. Coulson’s body had been with the rest of them as they toured their new secret base, but his mind had been with the box.

 

The place was fully stocked: training facilities, weapons supplies, science labs that would make Fitz cry when he regained consciousness, and living quarters with beds that had called them all the moment the tour was over. Only, they didn’t seem to call Coulson.

 

Because now, he was standing at the head of a conference table when he should’ve been sleeping, staring down at the matte metal like it held all the secrets of the universe and he wasn’t sure he wanted to know them.

 

May had entered the room on silent feet, but Coulson still knew she was there. “You know what Agent Koenig said to me when we got here?”

 

“He asked you what you’d like to do first.”

 

“What _I’d_ like to do. I’ve spent the last few days asking myself what Nick would want. I’ve been staring at this toolbox, trying to anticipate the orders he’d give me, what his master plan is, but now… that doesn’t matter anymore. SHIELD is mine now.”

 

May straightened her spine, feeling something important in the air. “You know what you’re going to do.”

 

Coulson slipped the cube into an almost invisible niche in the table, and out of it sprung a soothing feminine voice.

 

“Please state your name.”

 

“Phil Coulson.”

 

“I’m sorry, I do not have anyone by that name in my system.”

 

“Director Philip J. Coulson.”

 

The box hummed for a moment, then burst up in a beam of light that fanned open into an array of files, shuffling through them before settling into the same pattern Coulson always laid out files on his office floor when he was trying to sort through things in his head. (Which was a state of disarray he’d never let anyone see, so course Fury used it.) “Welcome, Director. How may I be of service, Sir?”

 

“Tell me, where are the Avengers?”

 

 

* * *

 

 

  

The text coming from an untraceable number wasn’t unexpected; for some reason the alphabet agencies thought they might lure her into revealing something. Regardless of that, it gave her the chance not to listen to Stark rant.

 

So yes, the text was expected and appreciated, but the words were not.

 

 _I always figured I’d be helping_ you _run SHIELD._

 

Coulson didn’t mean to be cruel, he never did, but the words still stung like a bullet graze. Phil believed in everyone, but never quite believed in himself. Coulson never saw that, for all Maria was Fury’s successor, Phil had been the one everyone wanted in the Director’s chair.

 

For Phil, they would all come back to the fold.

 

“Are you listening to me, Hill? ‘Cause this is good stuff here. And unless that’s Pepper you’re legally obligated not to blow me off.”

 

“It’s not Pepper.” She pressed on before Stark could ask. “It’s the new Director of SHIELD.”

 

Stark demanded to know who, how, and where. It was cruel to send Stark Phil’s way before he was ready, but, like everyone else, Stark wouldd be glad to go when he knew it was Phil.

 

She was just saving them time.

 

  

* * *

 

 

 

She’d lied to Steve when she said she’d burned all her aliases. SHIELD would’ve had to _know_ all her aliases for that to be possible, and no one alive knew all her names, not even Clint.

 

Clint, who was her only concern at the moment.

 

The spy she had once been would’ve gone with Fury to hunt down the corpse of HYDRA, while the friend she might someday be would’ve gone with Steve and Sam to track down the Winter Soldier, and the girl she could barely remember being would’ve wept that the James she had loved must be put aside for Steve to bring back Bucky.

 

But none of that mattered to the woman she was now.

 

What mattered was that Clint had spent the last year so deep under cover that even Natasha hadn’t been allowed to see him. So deep under cover that when the sky had literally fallen down on their heads, Clint hadn’t come running to help her pick up the pieces.

 

And that caused her concern.

 

According to Fury, he’d sent Clint to run down leads on whispers that turned out to be HYDRA. He’d thought the reports were exaggerated, but after spending a year with shrinks piecing his head back together and the WSC breathing down his neck, Fury had thought it good to send Clint out someplace where he legitimately couldn’t be contacted. Natasha had known all that, and she also knew that this assignment wasn’t supposed to take him more than a month.

 

But Clint thought he was on the trail of something, and he’d stayed untraceable.

 

(Not for the first time since the Battle of New York, Natasha caught herself wishing that Coulson hadn’t died. The man would’ve laughed at the thought that Hawkeye should be allowed to go completely off grid. He’d say, “Barton, when I let you go off comms you come back with Russian assassins and no pants.” And Clint wouldn’t have had a comeback for that since it was true.)

 

Natasha had patiently waited for Steve to get out of the hospital, and for the chance to tell the Senate Subcommittee that they were all paper-pushing assholes—not in so many words, but that’s what Clint’s voice in the back of her head had wanted her to say.

 

And while she waited, she tagged all the aliases that only he and she knew about, knowing, _knowing_ that he would ping her back.

 

He would.

 

Clint had promised her that he wasn’t running off like a dog to die alone. And she believed him.

 

When the ping came, she was with Steve and Sam, helping the poor boys stop chasing their tails in their search. Clint’s email came to an ID only Clint knew about, came with a set of coordinates that she went running to, with Steve and Sam following behind.

 

It wasn’t until the blast doors slid open at the secret base that she remembered… there was a third person who’d known about that cover.

 

 

* * *

 

  

 

Jane was getting used to the Bifrost’s thunder out on her balcony. This particular morning Sif swept into Jane’s kitchen, sharing her grin at the sight of Thor in nothing but a spare pair of Bruce’s yoga pants.

 

“Morning, Sif,” Jane mumbled through her morning haze. “Want some coffee?”

 

“I would appreciate the beverage, but I must discuss a pressing matter.”

 

Thor and Bruce both looked up from their waffles. “Something wrong?”

 

“Not wrong. In fact, I believe something is finally about to be made right. Heimdall says the new Director of SHIELD would like to speak with you both.”

  

 

* * *

 

 

 

The room _hummed_ as Pietro bounced from wall to wall like he was Cap’s shield hunting a bad guy. Clint shrugged a giggling Wanda off his shoulder and laid her down on one of the skeevy, by-the-hour, motel beds. “Kid, if you don’t stop moving I swear on my bow I will track down arrows and pin you to the damn wall.”

 

Pietro skidded to a stop, smoke spiraling up from his feet, but still vibrated in place. “We can’t stay here, Hawk! They’ll find us! They’ll come for us!”

 

Clint put his hands on the boy’s shoulders and pushed him back towards the bed. “We gotta lay low. The two of you are higher than damn kites right now. We can’t run if you can’t think straight.”

 

“But—”

 

“Kid! Sit your ass down and keep Wanda from blowing something up with her brain.”

 

Pietro rolled his eyes, but still flopped down beside her, so Clint counted that as a win.

 

To be honest, Clint’s plan didn’t extend much further than ‘get the hell out of the HYDRA base that was experimenting on people.’ Now that he’d managed Step One, he moved on to Step Two. Which really, wasn’t a whole lot more than using his hidden cell phone to ping one of the covers that only he and Tasha knew about. He’d give her twelve hours to give him _something_ , and if she didn’t, he’d move the kids on to another safe spot to try again. He refused to think that Tasha wouldn’t answer him at all.

 

It took a whole ten minutes for Tasha to comm him and ask how long he could hold out for rescue. Clint saw a string of Russian expletives in his near future, and he’d never been so grateful in his life.

 


End file.
